Borg Plywood = Thin Veneer ??

[Glen Blanchard]

I work almost exclusively with hardwood, but built a small bank of drawers for the shop over the weekend. While working with the Borg plywood, it became evident that the veneered face is very very thin. Would the veneer on plywood purchased from a lumber shop (read "higher quality") be thicker or is this just about the same regardless of the source?

[Joe Chritz]

Maybe.

Veneer thickness is one of the factors in grading plywood and of course cost. Lots of lower cost plywood has very thin veneers. Oak is especially bad it seems.

I have been getting maple plywood (oak and birch is available also) at a local Menards and it is very thick veneer. HVPA graded, fir core and very good stuff. Not a bad cost at around $50 a sheet for 3/4.

If you want really good plywood go to a lumber yard and ask for A1 grade in your cut of choice. (Plain sawn, rotary etc.) Hold on to your wallet.

Joe

[jim oakes]

Yes, I bought 3/4 birch plywood from Home Depot 3 years ago and it was the same thickness veneer (I'll call it standard about 1/32" thick) I've used for years.
Last year some 3/4" oak from the same Home Depot was about 1/64" or less thick! It is so thin they tinted the glue to match the oak. A real challenge to sand the solid oak edging flush with "tissue paper thin" veneers. I checked the birch and it's super thin now as well.

My guess is the thinner stuff is imported. The standard thickness must be available, you really can't sand the super thin stuff much,so it's not going to work for most applications.

[Glen Blanchard]

A real challenge to sand the solid oak edging flush with "tissue paper thin" veneers.

This was exactly my dilemma. Very easy to burn right through it.

BTW, I should have mentioned that is was birch plywood.

[David DeCristoforo]

It's amazing isn't it? How thin wood can be sliced using modern technology? While Joe makes a good point. it's not a "rule of thumb" that more expensive ply will have a thicker face veneer. I have bought "architectural grade" sheets at an ungodly price per that had veneers thinner than the average tissue. Sanding? Forget it. Even with 180 grit in a palm sander you could burn right through the stuff. Answer? Beats me! It seems that getting less for more is one of the costs of "planetary survival" for better or for worse. I have gotten into the habit of laying up my own veneers when I needed thicker faces or having sheets laid up at a custom pressing shop (again at ungodly cost).

Yuumiyoru DeWhodaheck

[JayStPeter]

Most borgs around me sell the junk ply, but one of the HDs has Columbia branded ply that's OK. I've bought expensive ply from hardwood dealers that was beautiful, but had super thin veneers also. Half of a $100+ sheet is now hanging on my shop wall holding tools. Unfortunately the only way to know is to check it out. I assumed the expensive stuff was going to be better ... bad assumption.

[Richard M. Wolfe]

I had never heard of Menard's until I got on this forum but wish we had them now. Joe, good quality plywood at $50 a sheet, and lumber core to boot, is a great price.

I can get hardwood plywood from my local lumberyard (veneer core) in oak or birch for about the same price. And it's been the same price forever, it seems. I remodeled my house in the early eighties and paid $50 a sheet then and the last I priced was right at fifty bucks.

But the kicker is that although the price has stayed the same the quality keeps going down. Any number of issues: thinner veneer, gaps where the veneer has pulled apart when it was applied, as many as seven or eight strips of veneer per sheet, sheets not square and off sized, warped, many more voids in the interior veneer. :mad:

[J. Z. Guest]

Glen, yes, that has been my experience.

I paid about $40 for a sheet of "3/4" red oak ply with paper thin veneer.

A couple months later, I bought a sheet of 3/4" Ash plywood for about $70 for the sheet from a hardwood lumber store. Yep, the veneer was easily 2-3X as thick.

[Mike Heidrick]

I was in Menards today. $43 for a sheet of 3/4" Red oak veneer ply. Baltic Birch ply was $69!! Is that the going rate for BB ply? Wow! it was 4X8 which was nice. Seemed like Birch, Red Oak were close in price and maple ply was $49 a sheet.

Noticed that 1/2" ply was $42! Why the same price????

What prices shoudl I be paying for 3/4" and 1/2" and 1/4" ply in the different varietys??

[Joe Chritz]

There are so many variables it isn't really possible to make a good blanket statement on cost.

Yoshivid Desato makes a good point that cost is not always a good factor to use, at least not alone. (I look for your posts just to see the names :D)

Anyway, expect to pay $50+ for birch in a really good quality, more for others. Some of the special plywood species are $70 for 1/4".

I try to remember what distributor the yard got any special orders for me so I can duplicate them in the future.

Joe

[John Gregory]

5 years ago when we built our shop, I purchased some 3/4" ply from HD. Paint grade, maple one side and birch on the other for about $25 IIRC. I build shop cabinets with it and even the carcass's for our daughter's kitchen. It preformed well.

Last time I was in HD lookin at ply, they had some similar ply for $34. The one sitting on top of the pile looked like a Ruffles potato chip. If I had not seen it myself, I would never have imagined that ply could do that. When you think of ply you think "stable substrate". The ply sold at my local HD today is horrible. Poor quality would be an understatement.

I was asking my hardwood supplier, MacBeaths Hardwoods, for a suggestion for reasonabily prices 3/4" inch ply and they suggested the poplar paint grade for $29. I will try that next time. I do some some more shop cabinets that need building.

[dustin sellinger]

I was in Menards today. $43 for a sheet of 3/4" Red oak veneer ply. Baltic Birch ply was $69!! Is that the going rate for BB ply? Wow! it was 4X8 which was nice. Seemed like Birch, Red Oak were close in price and maple ply was $49 a sheet.

Noticed that 1/2" ply was $42! Why the same price????

What prices shoudl I be paying for 3/4" and 1/2" and 1/4" ply in the different varietys??

Well I'd have to say that was pretty good. Last summer I needed 5 sheets of 4x8 3/4 BB ply (well Columbia FP, but looks pretty close) and they cost me over $110 each. And I paid nearly $80 per for the 5x5 sheets I needed. (more then a dozen..)

Oh and our Borgs plywood has SUPER thin faces also. You can't even ease the edge. The Columbia forest products stuff was about 1/32 , but the real BB ply was nearly a 1/16. Great stuff to work with.

[Greg Cole]

If you want really good plywood go to a lumber yard and ask for A1 grade in your cut of choice. (Plain sawn, rotary etc.) Hold on to your wallet.Joe

I beg to differ, if you ask for A1 ply... you'll most likely have to hand over the entire wallet not just the contents....;)
The Borg stuff is what it is for the price, although I have scraps from borg birch ply from 6-7 years ago and it's much much nicer than what you get today (more plies, thicker veneer, few if any voids etc).

Cheers.
Greg

[Mike Heidrick]

Oh and our Borgs plywood has SUPER thin faces also. You can't even ease the edge. The Columbia forest products stuff was about 1/32 , but the real BB ply was nearly a 1/16. Great stuff to work with.

The Menards BB plywood is 13 laminated layers and they all looked to be close to the same thickness. I will look closer.

[Peter Quinn]

I took home some ribbon SA mahogany and quilted sapele 9 ply cutoffs from work a while back. The mahogany is about $240 a sheet, the quilted sapele (plum puddin) requires an organ donation be made when purchasing. That veneer is so thin if you walk next to it holding sand paper it starts to shred. They both come "Sanded", and I mean ready to go to finishing, so don't put any scratches on em or their done!

The average good cabinet grade I have seen is similar to the Borg in average veneer thickness, but I find the thickness of the face veneers on quality cabinet grade plywood is more consistent across the whole face, where as the Borg junk tends to get the core veneers folded over and under itself which leads to thin spots on the face veneers after final sanding. More importantly I've never seen any plywood warp and move after cutting like that Chinese stuff my Borg carries.

There's a good reason it hasn't been grade stamped by any known standards organization...most standards don't go that low.

[David DeCristoforo]

"...I look for your posts just to see the names..."

I may have to quit on that too...I'm running out of variations! Help! I'm so confused...
:confused::confused::confused:

Yoshiforo DeYamamato

[William Nimmo]

Home depot is now selling domestic plywood at around $60 sheet, bich and and oak, cherry @$90. Seems pretty good.
I just built a wall unit with $100 plus sheets of a maple from a great supplier. Sanded it for quite a while, first at 120, then 180 , then 220
not even close to getting through the veneer.
worth every penny

[Howard Acheson]

As I recall, the standard for most decorative hardwood veneer plywood is 1/40"-1/50". It really makes little difference whether the plywood is US/Canada or European/Asian. Also, the face grading (A, B, etc) does not relate to veneer thickness. The face grading is for appearance only.

While spending more for plywood may mean getting a thicker veneer, it is more likely that any veneer will be at above. With the cost of fine woods today, much fine lumber is made into veneers. The best appearance quality wood is made into veneer.

Hardwood plywood is sanded at the factory to about 180 grit. It should not be sanded with anything lower and it is best to only sand it with 180 grit mounted on a sanding block sanding in the direction of the grain. Then get a coat or two of finish on the wood. Now you can sand for smoothness as you are sanding the finish, not the veneer. Save you machine sanders for solid wood.

Finally, the plywood sold at the big boxes I am familiar with are faced with B and C veneers. The big boxes are not where you go if you want the better A veneer faced plywood. The big box plywood is generally less expensive than a specialty lumber source because the big box is not selling furniture grade plywood.

[Peter Quinn]

"the plywood sold at the big boxes I am familiar with are faced with B and C veneers."

The plywood I buy from my lumber supplier has an ANSI stamp on it, I typically source A-1 thru C-3 depending on the application. I believe it is canadian. While not perfect, it is quite good.

The plywood at my local BORG has only one stamp...CHINA. With the exception of their oak plywood, all others (maple, birch, poplar, flavor of the day..) look like D-4 9 ply to me. I don't know how ANSI feels about core veneers folding in and out of each other like a geological survey of tectonic plates, but I've never seen this in the Norobond plywood. I have dug through 20 sheets to find one without major face veneer delamination. I have had Borg Chinese plywood (maple veneer, poplar core) curl off my table saw when ripped like reaction wood.

I'm guessing the Borg adjust their product line to suit the local market, and I'm guessing the one's in my area believe the market to be filled with imbeciles.

[Michael Pyron]

I just Googled the phrase 'thin plywood veneer' and found this thread...

the reason I googled was I am having some serious issues with the hardwood veneers as of late...it has been years since I've actually dealt with the stuff as I have been doing commercial millwork installs where all materials are pre-finished and therefore only good woodworking is allowable (i.e. no sanding is possible)... I must say that I am totally freaking out at how thin the veneers are on all of the cherry plywood I've been able to find locally in Austin, Texas...'luckily' I ordered some 320 grit hook and loop sandpaper years ago and now am HAVING to use it as even 240 grit burns right through in a heartbeat...to clarify things I've done countless rooms of block paneling out of plywood with solid wood mouldings and have rarely ever sanded through the veneer...at this time I am about to pull my hair out in frustration....I've always been known for how good I can get my joints when working with plywood, but on the project I am now doing I actually had to tell the owner he was just going to have to deal with being able to feel the joints on some 20" rips that butt joint...those words have NEVER before come out of my mouth....as a note this is domestic plywood and not the stuff from China....

at the risk of getting a warning by a mod I just have to say...

this is complete and utter BULL$HIT....